


The Best Revenge

by pipistrelle



Series: Glimmadora Week 2020 2.0 [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora's Here To Help, Aftereffects of Shadow Weaver's bullshit, Early Days, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Glimmadora Week 2020, Post Princess Prom, post S1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25739239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: Glimmer's time in Shadow Weaver's clutches left scars. Adora knows that not all scars are visible.For the Glimmadora Week prompt "Battles/Injuries".
Relationships: Adora & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora/Glimmer (She-Ra)
Series: Glimmadora Week 2020 2.0 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1880776
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	The Best Revenge

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place between the S1 finale and the start of S2; references the events of "Princess Prom".

Since Adora’s the one who arranged the patrol schedule of the Bright Moon palace guard, it’s easy to slip out of her room and down the hall without being spotted. It’s not like she’d be stopped or questioned, seeing as she's the legendary She-Ra and the hero of the hour, but walking around the Rebellion’s most secure location with an armful of weapons, in the middle of the night, is kind of awkward. Better to just avoid that conversation completely.

It's long past midnight, but Glimmer’s still awake, sitting cross-legged in her bed reading field reports by sparkle-light. As Adora comes in she looks up and absently tosses the glow to the other hand. The movement casts strange shadows over her face. "Adora? What are you —”

She disappears with a squeak as Adora hurls a heavy wooden practice sword at her. The sword clatters dully to the floor and Glimmer materializes next to it, nudging it with one foot like she expects it to bite.

“Come on, we’re training!” Adora says brightly.

Glimmer hefts the sword uncertainly. “In the middle of the night?”

“Yup!”

Glimmer looks at her, takes in the sheaf of wooden javelins, the extra practice sword strapped to her back, and the heavy wooden buckler under one arm. “Adora, what is going on?”

“Only one way to find out,” Adora replies, and vaults out the window. 

She hears Glimmer’s furious yell through the rush of night air and the crack of branches. A pink glow illuminates the approaching ground, familiar arms wrap around her waist, and Adora falls lightly onto a soft bed of moss from a height of several inches. Glimmer rolls off and staggers to her feet, brushing leaves and twigs from her cape. “Okay, seriously, I don’t know if this is another crazy First Ones virus or something, but —“

“Come on! We’re not even going off castle grounds.” Adora trots off into the trees, listening to the rustling and grumbling behind her as Glimmer follows. 

The close, tangled branches give way to the moonlit clearing where Adora transformed Swift Wind on her first day in Bright Moon. The clearing itself looks transformed now, made fey and gilded by the spray of the waterfall, and made creepy by the headless training dummy propped in the center.

“Okay," Glimmer says,“this is starting to weird me out.”

Adora swings the wooden buckler up and lashes it onto the dummy’s shoulders. The buckler is barely more than a few square planks nailed together; its only purpose is to train recruits to fight with something heavy on one arm. It looks bizarre and grotesque, until Adora goes to work on it with the paint pots and brush she borrowed from a village kid. Then, as the red and black whorls take shape, it starts to look familiar.

Adora carefully paints in the blank white eyes and steps back, admiring her handiwork. It’s not a bad likeness of Shadow Weaver, especially in the dim moonlight. The hair-tendrils, made from a mop dipped in pitch, are particularly lifelike.

She glances back. Glimmer’s still at the edge of the trees, not moving, clutching the wooden sword like she might wring it in half. “Adora,” she says, not angry now but quiet. “What is this?”

Adora settles on a stump about halfway down the open space, leaving a clear path between Glimmer and the dummy. “What you’re doing doesn’t work,” she says simply.

“What do you mean, what I’m doing?”

“Recharging instead of sleeping.”

“I’m not —“ Glimmer starts, then runs up against the flat wall of Adora’s expression and changes course. “It does work! I’m fine! I don’t need this — whatever this is!”

Adora’s been considering this moment for days. It’s the lynchpin of the entire campaign, and it requires a careful approach. It’ll be no use to point out the way Glimmer’s been falling asleep in odd places and teleporting in a panic when she’s shaken awake. Or the shadows under her eyes, that lighten a little every time she goes to recharge but darken again in hours. Any mention of that will just push her further on the defensive. 

Instead Adora says, “Trying not to sleep never works. She knows how to plant nightmares so deep that they can even get into your mind while you’re awake. She did it to Catra more than me, but once she caught me sneaking around after hours and cursed me with a dream of falling off a cliff. It lasted for a week.”

“I —“ Glimmer takes a hesitant step forward into the clearing. “I thought maybe I was going crazy.”

“You’re not. But she wants you to think you are.”

The point of the practice sword swings up, as though to skewer the dummy’s heart across a dozen feet of empty air. “And will this work? To get her out of my head?”

“Nothing else works better. Remember how good it felt to punch her in the face?”

Glimmer takes another step and glances over at Adora. The exhaustion that seems to have been permanently etched onto her features in the last week lifts a little, into the shadow of a smile. “I don’t think my mother would approve of this.” 

“Definitely not,” Adora agrees.

After a while Shadow Weaver’s head splinters, cracks, and falls off. A while after that, the practice sword falls from Glimmer’s hands and Glimmer falls too, collapsing on the grass, breathing hard.

Adora sits next to her. “Better?”

“Yeah,” Glimmer says, and bursts into tears.

Adora freezes — of all the weird things about Bright Moon, this easy display of weakness still might be the weirdest — then pulls herself together. She knew this might happen, and she’s seen Bow and Glimmer comfort each other enough. She cautiously pats Glimmer’s shoulder. “Hey,” she says, trying to sound confident and reassuring instead of helpless. “Hey, it’s — it’s okay. Really.”

Glimmer sits up and sniffles, scrubbing at her eyes with one grass-stained gauntlet.

“Do you want to, uh — I know you and Bow always want me to _talk_ about stuff like this, do you want to —?”

That earns a watery laugh. For a second Adora’s stung by the rejection, but then Glimmer leans against her, resting her head on Adora’s shoulder. There are still twigs in her hair. “You’re terrible at this,” she says.

“They don’t exactly teach all this mushy stuff in Basic Combat,” Adora protests.

“It’s okay. You’re really good at hitting stuff. And you were right, I — I needed that.”

Adora puts an arm around Glimmer’s shoulders and they sit like that for a while, resting in the silence. Finally Glimmer says, very softly, “You were in some of them. The nightmares.”

“She’ll use anything she can. Anything that will get to you, get you to do what she wants.”

“She wants me not to trust you,” Glimmer growls. “She wants to drive us apart. Drive you away.”

“She can’t,” Adora says, certain and at once.

Glimmer takes her hand. “No one can.”


End file.
